Speeding towards Rangiroa

Friday 11th April

Its 4.30 AM on my watch. Nothing much on the sailing front.

Shin caught a large Wahoo, which is the name as far as I know in English as well. All filletted and in the fridge for today and the freezer for later. Such a happy chappy! We were sailing in loose company with another WARC boat called Chantelle, a Beneteau 42, but they went on when we stopped to pick up the fish and deal with it, so we dont know where they are now.

All is well on board, we all had showers yesterday, Shin had 2. He had some fish on him so I told him to have another one. Watermaker is still working manually, ie no electronics. We have 2 full tanks and 1 nearly empty at this stage. I filled them all in Nuku Hiva with the watermaker and a hose from it to the 2 front tanks. So its all good water.

Our time of arrival into Rangiroa is showing as around 10.00AM Saturday, which is pretty much ideal for visibility.

Our weatherman Bruce is keeping us well informed on the weather front and all looks well ahead, so no immediate problems. The winds and weather are both exactly as he has been predicting, even the rain showers, which are brief but very heavy. They help to wash the salt off the boat.The winds are light for us, around 10 knots across the beam of the boat so we are on a broad reach but not too fast around 6.5-7 knots most of the time.

I dont think I mentioned it but the generator stopped a couple of days ago and was just beeping at us, showing low coolant again. When I checked it out the fan belt for the sea-water pump had broken, so I replaced it and all is OK since.

We are now showing 198 miles to run to the entrance of the pass into the lagoon at Rangiroa.